It's Not You, It's the Gays

Excellent satire of the view that gay marriage is going to imperil heterosexual couples:

In addition to the issue of justice for gay and lesbian couples, and to the vital need to mock conservatives, there's really a larger problem here. It's genuinely the case that we have a lot of social problems that are complicated by family instability -- children are expensive and time-consuming and tend to be much better off if both parents are involved in bringing them up. So the idea that marriage and family life could, in some sense, use some shoring-up isn't a crazy one. But conservatives don't seem to have many actual ideas about doing this apart from blaming the gays. But I think serious social conservative ideas on this front would be welcome.

Comments

why isn't the conservative argument something like this:

"if those gays would stop being flaming fags and commit themselves to marriage like the rest of us normal people, society would be much better off. and there would be less AIDS! instead, they're out having fun, no commitment lives and encouraging straight people to do the same thing. gay marriage shouldn't just be legalized, it should be required!"

Posted by confused | June 19, 2008 10:32 AM

Around half of all marriages end in divorce. If I were a movement conservative worried about families, I would spend my time thinking of ways to get that 50% number down to, say, 45% or 40%. In 2006 there were 58 million married couples in the US and and 77.4 million families; I, as a conservative, would try to find ways of getting people who are shacking up to get married, and of finding ways of keeping them married longer. That would be the most productive vein.

If, instead, I obsess about the 2.5% of the population that's gay, it's mathematically obvious that my concern is not families or divorce or the health of marriages, but homos.

Survey says...

Posted by the puzzled ibex | June 19, 2008 10:37 AM

Being serious doesn't win elections. This is about power and its spoils, pure and simple.

Posted by Curtis | June 19, 2008 10:38 AM

A big problem for the conservative movement as a movement, of course, is that those who profit from the really degrading social messages tend to be, well, patrons of the conservative movements. Lots of folks in Hollywood are liberal, for instance, but when it comes to hotel porn, we find true-blue Mormons in good standing at the top. And it goes like that. Corporate caprice that ruins retirement savings, the destruction of local businesses in favor of abusively underpaying chains, pollution that damages children's development, on and on - the forces ruining society are largely funded by conservative backers. This makes it hard for them to come up with solutions.

Posted by Bruce Baugh | June 19, 2008 10:43 AM

and tend to be much better off if both parents are involved in bringing them up

I've always resisted this assertion because I was raised by a single mother and while I didn't get into Harvard or become a staff member for an elite political magazine, I like to think I'm probably not representative of our "social problems." Now I very well could be the exception and not the rule. Indeed, it's certainly much easier with two parents instead of one parent, but how much of the "social problems" are simply correlated with family instability, which might be conflated by the likelihood that the bad parents category overlaps substantially with the family instability category. In other words, is it a simple numbers game or would two bad parents in lieu of one parent still be two bad parents?

Nonetheless, while I'm not sure that marriage in and of itself can fix anything relative to unmarried couples, I think the conservative reliance on marriage as an important institution really hampers the idea that more people participating in this institution is bad.

Posted by Brent | June 19, 2008 10:48 AM

Isn't the solution obvious? Ban divorce! Of course, they'd never do that.

Posted by Mike Cohen | June 19, 2008 10:51 AM

If you want to help families, then build a strong sociail safety net. Or drown the federal government in a bathtub. Pretty sure it's one or the other.

Posted by phil | June 19, 2008 10:51 AM

The conservative "idea" for shoring up marriage is to prevent certain people who are in committed relationships from getting married. If you don't see the logic in that you're just hopeless and I'm not going to waste my time trying to explain it to you.

Posted by ibid | June 19, 2008 10:52 AM

I don't know why I feel compelled to be fair to the cracker dipshits in the religious right, but... They actually do, sort of, have an explanation, albeit one amenable to well-deserved mockery.

Basically, their argument is that gays are sex-crazed monsters of promiscuity, and any gays who get married will have marriages full of popper-fueled orgies, man-on-dog, and all the other perversions of which perverts are fond. It's bad enough that they do all that on the streets of Haight-Ashbury, but if they get married, then the country will be full of people insisting that marriage can accomodate multiple partners, drugs, atheism, and the like. Thus, marriage will no longer mean All That Is Good And Decent, because there'll be so many horrible, promiscuous perverts who're just as married as the god-fearing people of Lubbock.

Basically, it's the all-white clubs argument: If we let those badly-behaved people in, the club will no longer stand for good behavior.

So they do *have* a case, and a reason. It's just a bad one, which is why they can't quite say it in public.

Posted by That Fuzzy Bastard | June 19, 2008 11:06 AM

I don't know why I feel compelled to be fair to the cracker dipshits in the religious right, but... They actually do, sort of, have an explanation, albeit one amenable to well-deserved mockery.

Basically, their argument is that gays are sex-crazed monsters of promiscuity, and any gays who get married will have marriages full of popper-fueled orgies, man-on-dog, and all the other perversions of which perverts are fond. It's bad enough that they do all that on the streets of Haight-Ashbury, but if they get married, then the country will be full of people insisting that marriage can accomodate multiple partners, drugs, atheism, and the like. Thus, marriage will no longer mean All That Is Good And Decent, because there'll be so many horrible, promiscuous perverts who're just as married as the god-fearing people of Lubbock.

Basically, it's the all-white clubs argument: If we let those badly-behaved people in, the club will no longer stand for good behavior.

So they do *have* a case, and a reason. It's just a bad one, which is why they can't quite say it in public.

Posted by That Fuzzy Bastard | June 19, 2008 11:21 AM

I've always resisted this assertion because I was raised by a single mother and while I didn't get into Harvard or become a staff member for an elite political magazine, I like to think I'm probably not representative of our "social problems."

Brent, this pretty conveniently describes me as well. I'm glad for your post -- your question really encapsulates some ideas I've always wondered about but have difficulty pinning down.

Posted by Brad L | June 19, 2008 11:29 AM

A minor point: Conservatives want to avoid diluting the notion that marriage is essentially about fecundity or producing kids. In fact the christian service and scripture passages seem much more concerned with spousal loyalty and commitment. The fecundity idea is largely inherited from the older nature religions. True, it's always a continuum, but little id anything in the essential Crhristian ideal of marriage seems at odds with gay marriage.
I mention this because beyond the neurotic fear of 'contamination' conservative might have a case for keeping a ritual intact. I feel for example that memorial day honors only the Civil War dead. But on examination it looks like the case against gays is very weak on this level too.

Posted by Arion | June 19, 2008 11:34 AM

At the risk of inviting blog perdition, I'm sorry to say that the blame-the-gays satires have reached diminishing returns. Dare I say boring?

I sometimes get the sense that the merit, promise and pride of these overdue social advances (like gay marriages) are becoming overshadowed by the inevitable satire that fetters them. Forget revenge being served cold, tempting as it is. It's like every civil gain now equally demands a comic strip. What we're witnessing is the flip-side of the retrograde right's goofy reflex-their mindless theatre to portray anarchy as the logical endgame to society's(long-overdue)divorce from guns and bibles and...drumroll...tradition.

No sound principle needs spit.

Posted by resh | June 19, 2008 11:36 AM

Around half of all marriages end in divorce.

The rate is significantly higher for Republican presidential candidates.

Posted by LFC | June 19, 2008 11:39 AM

serious social conservative ideas on this front would be welcome

So would unicorns and magical ponies. Too bad they don't exist. And they don't exist because the social conservatives (with a very few exceptions) aren't looking at economic factors that contribute to family instability--which have a hell of a lot more impact than the things they find personally offensive.

Posted by Tom Hilton | June 19, 2008 11:43 AM

If you are going to use religion/the bible to support anti-gay activities than we also should use the same justification for, say, adultery...which after all is an explicit "Thou Shall Not" as sayeth to Moses. So if you want to back an amendment that says marriage is between a man and a woman, I get where you are coming from in the bible, but then why not be even more pro-marriage and also posit in the amendment that adultery should be a capital offense as it is in the Bible?

Posted by scott | June 19, 2008 11:44 AM

I sometimes get the sense that the merit, promise and pride of these overdue social advances (like gay marriages) are becoming overshadowed by the inevitable satire that fetters them.

Resh, I respectfully disagree. Satire has been used throughout history to put point out the truly ridiculous, particularly when it comes from entrenched sources of power. It's a very effective tool.

The right wingnutosphere that promotes discrimination against gays need to be mocked and marginalized, something satire does very well. Think about it. People like Robertson, Falwell, Hagee, Parsley, etc. are actually taken seriously by many in this country, including the current GOP and much of the media. How about Limbaugh, Coulter, and O'Reilly? All need to be mocked and marginalized.

And when somebody tries to quote one of these clowns to make a point, an appropriate response is "you're quoting WHO? [Snort. Snicker.]"

Posted by LFC | June 19, 2008 11:49 AM

One proposal I've heard is that women should be encouraged (by whom? how?) to get married and have kids at a younger age, so that instead of a career path interrupted by child-rearing, they can start on the career path after the youngest child is in school.

From a cold-blooded economic perspective this makes a certain amount of sense, but then I think of the relationships that I had in high school and as an undergraduate, and well, I'm glad I didn't marry so young, and IIRC people who marry young are more likely to get divorced. So how can I wish that on someone else?

Posted by Seth Gordon | June 19, 2008 11:50 AM

A minor point: Conservatives want to avoid diluting the notion that marriage is essentially about fecundity or producing kids.

Funny, I always thought that the cause-effect on this one worked in the opposite direction. That is, having decided that they don't want Teh Gays getting married, many conservatives have latched onto the idea that "marriage is principally for child-rearing, and gays can't, so they aren't eligible."

Absent gay marriage, is this really a motivating concern?

Posted by Brad L | June 19, 2008 12:02 PM

One thing I've never understood from a strategic standpoint is why the Democrats don't try to co-opt "family values" and take the term away from the Republicans.

As it stands now, "family values" is an Orwellian code word for anti-sex and homophobia.

Meanwhile, all the policies that would actually *help* families and strengthen the institution are owned by the Democrats.

What's the leading cause of divorce? Financial problems. Democrats are for a safety net. What's the leading cause of financial problems? Healthcare. Democrats are for universal healthcare.

Sex education? Democrats back a policy that will actually cut down on teenage pregnancy and help with responsible family planning. Republicans don't.

Then there's things like universal pre-k, education spending, extracurricular programs, and a whole host of other stuff that could help working parents with child care, as well as providing good benefits to the kids themselves.

The list goes on and on like that. Democratic policies support, strengthen, and promote the family as an institution. Republican policies tear it down, while throwing up smoke screen issues that have nothing to with it - porn! gays! women's nipples!

Posted by Eric | June 19, 2008 12:03 PM

What you see the fundies arguing is something like this:

Gay sex is just so darn attractive to ordinary people that if gays are tolerated in society, everyone will chose to be gay, and then where will we be?

No, seriously--that's their argument--go read what they say.

Posted by rea | June 19, 2008 12:07 PM

LFC-

Not discounting satire's value, mind you, just questioning its Pavlovian design on matters progressive.

Yes, satire can suitably make buffoons of Limbaugh and his species, though some things are self-evident, but it isn't his brood that needs convincing. Besides, forget them. They're paleo-lunatics who see the earth as flat and alway will.

The convincing, the awakening, needs to take place in the vast expanse that is reasoned America. Satire will take you there, but it will always be an uncertain visitor.

Posted by resh | June 19, 2008 12:10 PM

LFC-

Not discounting satire's value, mind you, just questioning its Pavlovian design on matters progressive.

Yes, satire can suitably make buffoons of Limbaugh and his species, though some things are self-evident, but it isn't his brood that needs convincing. Besides, forget them. They're paleo-lunatics who see the earth as flat and alway will.

The convincing, the awakening, needs to take place in the vast expanse that is reasoned America. Satire will take you there, but it will always be an uncertain visitor.

Posted by resh | June 19, 2008 12:11 PM

Ultimately, what they are trying to protect is patriarchy. There is no longer any legal differences between husband and wife, but the fundamental asymmetry of heterosexual marriage preserves the idea of two well-defined roles in marriage.

If we allow men to marry men and women to marry women, then those well-defined roles are obliterated, and heterosexual couples might start questioning their roles in their marriage.

Posted by Misplaced Patriot | June 19, 2008 12:27 PM

To quote Barney Frank "The divorce rate is 50%; how is that my fault?"

Following up Brent above: Children are better off if the people raising them are financially, psychologically etc prepared to do so, and the more adults who really care about you, the better. Marriage between parents is one way to aim for this; if you want to talk large-scale studies there is certainly a difference between outcomes for children of single and married parents. There is also a difference in outcomes for children of single parents who result from 30-40 year olds saying "Well, I really want kids, no life partner in sight, I'm financially stable enough to afford a child, I've weighed my support network (friends, family, my brother as model of adult male behavior, etc) I really want to do this" and those whose parent said in effect "I can't support myself, but why not have a baby?" And to cite my brain development reading and the long history of children ably raised by a widowed parent: Some things are unavoidable, some things are. A parent who recognizes A and B as drawbacks beyond her (or his) control and works extra hard at C, D, and E to compensate is doing their job--no one thing needs to be a curse. This is the hard line of not condemning a single mother for choosing that path but needing to acknowledge that most of a kindergarten class being in this group seems to have real and large effects compared to a class where almost all the children's parents are still married--how do you not condemn individuals who may have excellent reasons while addressing something that on a large scale is clearly a serious problem for the children, holding them back?

Every solution tried has drawbacks. (If you look at rules regarding who can marry traditionally, such as female virginity combined with a bride price or dowry, they can be seen as an attempt to make sure all children arriving are cared for. None of these systems was perfect by a long shot, but they may well have been better than no rules.) We could do:

Government control of fertility with only licensed parents. (A friend who had to pass many hoops to adopt pondered why proof of the ability to parent couldn't be required before getting pregnant.) This involves more government control than Americans will tolerate.

Social control of fertility, with divorce leading to social banishment and illegitimate birth to lifelong punishment of the child. We decided this was unfair to the children in the latter case and led to some marriages we didn't want to promote in the former.

Laissez faire: As seen, this is not necessarily best for children.

Following up Brent's point, I'd love to see the Dems embrace an explicit pro-family plank such as he describes. Take Head Start: Because this program has never expanded to meet the demand it's easy to compare outcomes of those who qualify but did or did not receive the help. Those who did: More likely to finish school, more likely to go to college, less likely to be juvenile delinquents, less likely to become parents while teenagers--all the social outcomes we would seem to want from such a program. And that's from Preschool!

Most telling statistic I came across this year: Something like 90-95% of the entering class at Harvard had parents who were married to each other.

Posted by Deborah | June 19, 2008 12:33 PM

Homosexual "marriage" has the serious risk of aggravating the crisis of fatherlessness. If you can get married without the possibility of children, then you can have children without the possibility of marriage.

Posted by Hector | June 19, 2008 4:42 PM

So, if you can use electricity without using a television, can you use a television without using electricity?

Posted by Julian Elson | June 19, 2008 5:17 PM

From a reply on my blog...

Matthew's observation is an example of the Third Way approach to politics because Matthew is saying that sound policy should affirm values that other political thinkers see as antithetical: not allowing anti-gay discriminationi and not allowing cultural decline to unravel the institutions of marriage and family.

What’s missing to make this a Fourth Way approach is to identify that the seemingly conflicting values arise from concerns at at least three distinct levels of social evolution. Protecting existing social institutions is a top priority of tradition-minded thinkers (amber altitude), defending the individual liberty of gays is a top priority of liberals (orange), and affirming a more inclusive understanding of the family is a top priority of multicultural-minded thinkers (green altitude). Matthew’s analysis would be strengthened by acknowledging that the goal of politics is to balance these values and not allowing any one set of values to establish a “dominator hierarchy” over other legitimate values.

Posted by Joe Perez | June 19, 2008 6:28 PM

I am a typical liberal, in favor of gay marriage, and am having an ongoing conversation with a family member who has turned against gay marriage after being "born again". One of the arguments used is that if gay marriage is allowed, will the next step be the legalization of polygamy between consenting adults? While part of me feels like adults should be able to do what they want, the feminist in me is profoundly uncomfortable with the idea of polygamy. Can anyone help me respond to this argument?

Posted by KCN | June 19, 2008 7:34 PM

KCN: Ah yes, the ol' polygamy canard. Here's a relevant article by Paul Varnell, per your request.

In fact, we may say that just as same-sex marriage is good because it allows more people to enjoy the pleasures and benefits of marriage, polygamy is undesirable because it deprives some people of the pleasures and benefits of marriage.

In short: None of the principles supporting gay marriage offers support for polygamy. Rather the opposite. And polygamy is not likely to be widely advocated because — unlike same-sex marriage — it answers no needs and removes no inequities in modern societies.

Posted by Joe Perez | June 19, 2008 8:02 PM

and tend to be much better off if both parents are involved in bringing them up...

It's also important to not give too much credence to arguments from outcome. I have little doubt that, were studies to show that children raised by gay couples do substantially better than children raised by straight couples, that the same conservatives would suddenly be concerned that potential adoptees go to gay couples first. Nor would that necessarily be the right thing to do - it would tend to lead to a system where the richest adopt first, because wealth brings a host of positive outcomes.

Posted by Brad L | June 20, 2008 8:35 AM

"serious" = great rhetorical trick (e.g. "thinking seriously about foreign policy" = new conservatism) but it doesn't say much. here, the lack of ideas that could flesh out what that means are telling.

Posted by uhoh | June 20, 2008 9:09 AM

oops. i meant neoconservatism.

Posted by uhoh | June 20, 2008 9:13 AM

Instead of "allowing gay marriage" shouldn't we simply abolish the awarding of "marriage bribes" to heterosexual couples. we need to disentangle the religious from the legal. http://www.imaginaryplanet.net/weblogs/idiotprogrammer/?p=83398762

Posted by Robert Nagle | June 20, 2008 5:09 PM

Instead of "allowing gay marriage" shouldn't we simply abolish the awarding of "marriage bribes" to heterosexual couples. we need to disentangle the religious from the legal. http://www.imaginaryplanet.net/weblogs/idiotprogrammer/?p=83398762

Posted by Robert Nagle | June 20, 2008 6:41 PM